Overall - A superb Imperial pilsener from Paddock Wood and Sherbrooke. The flavours of the beer take a regular pilsener up to a whole other level. Refreshing in flavour and body. Another great rare find in Calgary.

Clear golden yellow, a few fingers of white head leaving great retention and lace. Nose is lightly bready, with some spicy and herbal Saaz and Noble hops. Palate carries the same, spicy, grassy and herbal with a sweet, grainy pale and pilsner malt base. Prominent lemony citrus hopping. Moderate bitterness, might low carbonation which aids drinkability. A contradictory style, but this is convincingly good. Would've loved to have a go at this fresh.

355ml bottle. The fourth in the Beer Gods series, as produced by Paddock Wood Brewing, from a 'concept of Jeff Werstiuk', which at Sherbrooke, is kind of like posthumous record royalties. Anyways, this time it's an ode to Ninkasi, the Sumerian patron goddess of beer.

This beer pours a mildly hazy pale golden amber colour, with two fingers of puffy, cushioned eggshell-white head, which leaves a decent array of rainforest treetop lace around the glass as it slowly sinks away.

It smells prominently of semi-sweet biscuity cereal malt, quite surprisingly crisp, like a well-made pilsner on steroids, a bit of lemony limoncello (redundant, I know), and zingy leafy, grassy hops. The taste is more rather biscuity, sharply grainy pale malt, with a certain bready heftiness, a simmering lemon booziness content in its understatement, and well-rendered, evenly bitter earthy, leafy, and hay-like hops.

The bubbles are duly present, and somewhat frothy at times, the body a sturdy medium weight, mostly smooth in the face of the swirling noble hops, and quite seriously creamy, if in a sort of airy, ethereal manner. It finishes actually on the dry side, the sassy hops and background booze pulling it off with a certain elan that I will not figure out before this bottle is through.

Well, then. It's always a bit of a heads-up when my well-earned pathos for something (in this case, the whole damned 'style') gets righted, reared, and otherwise rectified. PW must have taken their Czechmate (already a very flavourful example of a Bohemian pils), and carefully amped it up, turning just the right dials, to get to here. Wow. Unlike every other version of the style that I've tried, which all merely taste like alcohol-enhanced lagers, this is an Imperialized (and, yes, alcohol-enhanced) traditional pilsner, all malt and hop differentials maintained. As for our goddess of note, I'm not sure where in the record this sort of beer came from, but I doubt it has much connection to the 'Hymn to Ninkasi', the first written beer recipe.